The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that government policies on poverty and welfare reform have left too many people in Britain unable to feed their families.

Justin Welby said that it was “a tragedy” that hunger still existed in the UK in the 21st century and praised the work of charity food banks which he said were “striving to make life bearable for people who are going hungry”.

The leader of the church of England placed some of the blame for hunger on the government, singling out “unnecessary problems” caused by bureaucratic delays in welfare benefit payments and sanctions – financial penalties imposed by jobcentres – which left vulnerable claimants without money for food for weeks on end.

Welby also urged a widening of the political debate around welfare away from the pillorying of people dependent on benefits to one which recognised the value of social security as an expression of a national belief that “we are one people with care for all”.

His intervention accompanied the publication of an all-party parliamentary report which examined the causes of rising food bank use and household food insecurity. It concluded that despite some signs of progress, Britain was still “a huge distance from abolishing hunger as we know it in our country”.

The government responded by saying it was committed to “an all-out assault on poverty,” pointing to rising employment, the planned introduction of the national living wage and an expansion of free childcare for poorer families.

A government spokesman said: “We agree with the all-party group that nobody should go hungry, especially when surplus food goes to waste. We will therefore carefully consider the recommendations made in this report.”

The UK’s largest food bank network, the Trussell Trust, in May revealed that it distributed enough emergency food to feed almost 1.1 million people for three days in 2014-15, although experts say the presence of thousands of other charity food outlets mean the true scale is almost certainly higher.

Labour MP Frank Field, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and a co-author of the report, criticised the government for failing to show urgency in tackling a problem he called “a huge national disgrace”.

He said: “The government seems to treat the scandal of hunger as little more than a boil of no significance on our society. Nothing could be further from the truth. The body of our country is wreaked by a raging fever called hunger.”

The report, which examines progress made on recommendations contained in the all-party group’s first Feeding Britain report a year ago, says that hunger is now regarded as a “permanent fact of life“ in the UK’s poorest communities.

Low wages, unstable employment and benefit delays, coupled with an inability to pay rent and household bills had brought “a sense of defeat” to many disadvantaged families, the report says. Hunger had been “woven into the lives of people for whom going without food on a daily basis is now almost inevitable”.

It added: “Hunger too often acts like the thief in the night, sneaking up and overpowering all too many families in this country.”

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It cites evidence from food banks which describes parents going without meals for up two days at a time, in order that they can feed their children, as “part of a pattern of life” in disadvantaged areas, although it added that this was difficult to quantify because of a “dismal” lack of robust official evidence on the prevalence of food insecurity.

Although it accepts that some of those going hungry could benefit from acquiring budgeting and cooking skills, it emphasises that the main causes of hunger are structural. Prompt payment of benefits and tax credits, coupled with a less harsh benefit sanctions regime would more than halve the numbers of people reliant on emergency food parcels, it says.

Although the report praises the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for “progress” towards its aim of bringing down average waiting times for benefit processing to 10 days, it notes that 205,000 people who made a new claim in 2015-15 for just one benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, waited over 10 days for a decision, over half of them over 16 days.

This was too long a wait for the poorest claimants to cope without money coming in, the report says, and as a consequence benefit processing delays were the single biggest trigger of food bank use.

It warns that universal credit, which will eventually replace several existing social security benefits, is likely to drive up food bank use because it there is a long “built-in” 42-day waiting period before new claimants receive payment. One food bank cited in the report says this formalised delay “seems to accept the existence of food banks as a safety net”.

The report professes a “hint of optimism” that the UK might be “witnessing a turn in the tide” in the fight against hunger. It points to the introduction of the national living wage in April 2016, plunging food prices, the emergence of voluntary programmes to tackle school holiday hunger, and supermarket projects to pass on surplus food to charities.

But it adds that this optimism must be heavily qualified, and it notes that food banks report an increase in the proportion of their clients who are in work. Dubbed “once-a-monthers” by one charity, this group cannot make low wages stretch to the end of the month and rely on food parcels as a “necessary tool for survival”.

Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “Iain Duncan Smith should reflect on this report, do some soul searching and not only address the unforgivable administrative shortcomings at the DWP, but overhaul the whole callous system that has created this scourge of rocketing food poverty.”

The report was authored by six MPs and peers, including Field, Tory MP John Glen, the Conservative peer Baroness Jenkin and the Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Tim Thornton. It took written evidence from 115 charities, councils, and businesses.